Diablo fans are petitioning Blizzard to goth up Diablo III, claiming that it deviates too much from the art direction of the original titles.
The petition, currently hosting 10,000 signatures, calls upon the development team to ditch what they perceive as "cartoon'ish art direction" that is influenced by the mighty Warcraft.
Topping the list of complaints is the omission of the light radius. In the original titles, everything outside a certain radius of the character was shadowed.
This function does not appear to be implemented in the dungeon shots of Diablo III.
Fans have even gone so far as to doctor Diablo III images to demonstrate their concerns. To be fair, we think they have a point.
A little bit more pedantic are the calls for Blizzard to ditch the blue/green tint to Diablo III's dungeons. The second before/after shot we've included is supposed to highlight what they mean, but it's hardly convincing. We were with you until this point, Diablo massive.
To take a look at more of their demands and see more screenshots, check out the petition online. And sign it if you feel that strongly about it. This is Blizzard, so it might do some good...
Diablo III lead producer Keith Lee has responded to (obsessed) fans' outrage over the graphical style not being in line with the rest of the series.
"One of the things that we considered when we were working on the visuals for Diablo III is the fact that colour is your friend," he said to MTV.
"We feel that colour actually helps to create a lot of highlights in the game so that there is contrast.
"A great analogy is like in Lord of the Rings - not everything is dark. It allows you to see what a creepy dungeon can be like but if everything is dark it doesn't allow you to have a lot of contrast."
Despite justifying the changes, Lee did say that Blizzard would listen to fan response. "We spend a lot of time actually iterating on [the game], and so in terms of the next phase, what we'll try to do is a proof on concept on lot of different gameplay aspects."
This is great!
